Have something to say?

Ready to be published? LXer is read by around 350,000 individuals each month, and is an excellent place for you to publish your ideas, thoughts, reviews, complaints, etc. Do you have something to say to the Linux community?

Good Call

Many of the look-alike licenses that sprung up recently roughly copy the GPL but leave aspects of the software rights exclusively to one company. Either that or they force any co-author to give up all rights to whomever. Definately not adequate recompensation for the efforts people would put in commiting software changes.

Developers that work on GPL projects are guaranteed that their works won't be abused in a licensing sense. To me it's always seemed much fairer to the contributors. It guarantees that should they have a falling out with the project maintainer, they're free to take what has been mutually created and work it toward divergent ends.

Software is similar to poetry, music and drama in that it is a form of writing. The author enjoys the copyright and as the copyright owner has the right to dictate the terms under which the work is licensed.

One may not like "look-alike" licenses, but the license choice was made by the author --it's their call. Your call is whether or not to accept the license; nothing says that you have to do so.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]